Maybe it was a coincidence, or maybe it was an act of revenge for Trevor Milton's years of trolling.
In October, Musk announced that Tesla's all-electric truck, the Semi, was officially put into production and will be delivered to its first customer, PepsiCo, in December. In addition, PGE, UPS, and Walmart have also placed orders.
Trevor Milton is the founder of Nikola Motors. Just as Tesla takes its surname from scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla, Nikola Motors takes the entrepreneurial icon's name.
In 2014, when Musk and Tesla continued to create new business miracles, an entrepreneur named Trevor Milton was inspired.
Previously, the alarm sales company and the used car sales website he founded failed. Although he was a marketing professional, although he did not understand any technology, he knew very well that entrepreneurship needed to follow the trend.
To be noticed by investors among the vast start-up companies, they must directly target the most prosperous companies in the industry.
Thus, the Nikola Motor Company was formally established.
Just like the name, Nikola Motors has to compete with Tesla in everything. Tesla focuses on lithium-ion battery power, and Nikola focuses on hydrogen fuel cell power.
Now that Tesla has established a firm foothold in the field of new energy cars, Nikola has taken a different approach and chosen trucks with a high number of possessions in the US market as the main category.
However, the bubble will eventually burst one day. In September 2020, a report from the short-selling agency Hindenburg Research directly knocked Nikola back to its original shape.
Investigators testified that the prototype car unveiled at the Nikola-1 launch was simply a model that couldn't be used in real life, and wires were even connected to the prototype car's launch to turn on the lights when it was unveiled.
The image of the truck driving at high speed on a flat surface in the promotional video shows the model is placed on a hillside, allowing it to slide by gravity. The company's order volume has a lot of fake content.
After the news came out, General Motors gave up the deal with Nikola, and Nikola's market performance was stagnant. Currently, Nikola’s market value is only $1.3 billion.
In addition to the fact that Nikola's hydrogen truck was later revealed to be a hoax, Milton himself was charged with multiple crimes.
On October 14, local time, after four weeks of evidence collection and six hours of court deliberation, a federal jury found Milton, 40, guilty of one count of securities fraud and two counts of wire fraud. It is reported that Milton's verdict will be released by January 2023, with a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
In essence, the formation of the Nikolai bubble is a testimony to a flashy era. In that era, there was excess capital, excess PPT, and excess liars. Therefore, there is no need to pay taxes for bragging, but it can raise funds, go public, and let a group of people make a fortune.
